A1200 with WB3.5 Disk Write Failures

[mchaggis]

Comrades,

I have recently taken possession of a Microbotics 1230xa accelerator card for my A1200. The CPU card has a 030 clocked at 55 MHz, and a 68882 FPU clocked at 50 MHz. The card also sports 128Mb of RAM.

I also use a 4GB CF SanDisk.

The description of my problem takes a while, so please bear with me.

In order to get Workbench up and running I have followed this process:

1)   Boot the A1200 using WB3.1 Install floppy.
2)   Open HDTools
3)   Define a new Hard Drive
4)   Partition a 100Mb bootable DH0 partition, intended for Workbench.
5)   Partition a 200Mb non-bootable DH1 partition, intended for Programs
6)   Reboot.
7)   Begin the installation and floppy shuffling of WB3.1

WB3.1 installs correctly, and is operational.

I then remove the CF card and plug it into my PC, and boot into WB3.1 using WinUAE.

From here I install the WB3.5, as:
1)   Install pre-requisites
2)   Install Main
3)   Install Internet software

There is no CD Rom on my A1200, yet.

I then replace the CF card into the A1200 and boot into WB3.5.

And here is where my troubles start…

If I open some applications, such as Prefs|WorkBench the OS halts and throws a requestor informing me of a disk write failure at address such and such. Some WB3.5 programs load, and some throw this or similar errors.

So far it’s a completely vanilla install of WB3.1 -> WB3.5.

And to queer the deal, if I remove the CF card and plug it into the aforementioned WinUAE session, the very programs that did fail, now load fine!!!!!

I’ve tried this process on two different (same brand) CF cards and the behave exactly the same.

I’m yet to try with the accelerator card removed.

Can anyone think of what might be going wrong? Do I need drivers, or some hitherto unknown configuration setting? The working in WinUAE to me is the strange bit??

Thanks in advance.

[whiteb]

Comrades,

Thanks in advance.

At a guess...... (Maybe someone else has a better idea)

Are you using -disableharddrivesafetycheck when loading Winuae ?
Have you changed the maxtransfer (in HDtoolbox) to 0x1fe00

[mchaggis]

Are you using -disableharddrivesafetycheck when loading Winuae ?

**Yes I have this disabled in WinUAE.

Have you changed the maxtransfer (in HDtoolbox) to 0x1fe00

**No I have not made this change, what does it do?

[whiteb]

Are you using -disableharddrivesafetycheck when loading Winuae ?

**Yes I have this disabled in WinUAE.

Have you changed the maxtransfer (in HDtoolbox) to 0x1fe00

**No I have not made this change, what does it do?

IDE devices ((More specifically, Scsi.device which drives the A1200 IDE, which are ATA5 or lower) have a command set with an 8-bit "sector count" field.

By setting the MAX TRANSFER to a value of "0x1FE00" (255 * 512) prevents the scsi.device for IDE interfaces from creating malformed IDE commands.

While IDE commands support 8-bit sector counts, not all devices like them. Windows (and other operating systems) tend to transfer data using 128 sector commands. By setting your max transfer to "0x1FE00" (127 * 512) you pretty much guarantee "sector count" compatibility with any IDE device.

[mchaggis]

And would I need to restart my entire installation from scratch? Or can this setting be added at any time?

[whiteb]

And would I need to restart my entire installation from scratch? Or can this setting be added at any time?

Nope, just fire up HDTOOLBOX, and adjust the Maxtransfer (You need to do this for each partition), save off, reboot.

[mchaggis]

Nope, just fire up HDTOOLBOX, and adjust the Maxtransfer (You need to do this for each partition), save off, reboot.

Great, I'll give this a try once I finish work.

Cheers!

[rkauer]

Also Microbotics 1230XA is a b!tch to use with anything above 3.1. For some odd reason it does not "like" MMU commands. And OS3.5/3.9 ROM update needs this to run.

 Expect to see regular crashes when opening the Amiga DOCK.

 To circumvent this issue only editing the Setpatch line in the S: Startup-sequence line. Notice you'll not use the OS3.5/3.9 patches this way.

 

Code: [Select]

Setpatch SKIPROMUPDATES ALL QUIET

[mchaggis]

Also Microbotics 1230XA is a b!tch to use with anything above 3.1. For some odd reason it does not "like" MMU commands. And OS3.5/3.9 ROM update needs this to run.

 Expect to see regular crashes when opening the Amiga DOCK.

 To circumvent this issue only editing the Setpatch line in the S: Startup-sequence line. Notice you'll not use the OS3.5/3.9 patches this way.

 

Code: [Select]

Setpatch SKIPROMUPDATES ALL QUIET

It's been constantly crashing!!!! But I thought that it was an artifact of the i/o problems I've been labouring under.

In fact it was going to be my next post if things didn't settle down....

Do the two BoingBags help in any way?

[rkauer]

Nope, that's known problem of this old accelerator. In WHDLoad games you can simply disabled some switches to avoid problems, but not in the OS itself (other than the ones I posted earlier).

[amiga1260]

THe best way to avoid crashing is  to reinstall everything, because I had the same problem with OS and games. The files are corrupted when the Maxtransfer were set on other value then 0x1fe00.

[rkauer]

If the corruption still occurs, low the max transfer value in octets (0x1FD00, 0x1FC00, etc) until the problem goes away.

[mchaggis]

With MaxTransfers set as suggested and the SetPatch applied I still get the following error:

---
DH0
Program Failed (error #8000000B)
Wait for disk activity to finish.
---

I will now try lowering the MaxTransfer values a couple of times before I embark on the re-install.

[mchaggis]

Interestingly when I remove the accellerator card, I don't get the "Program Failed" message. And this is with no other changes...I am able to load WB programs that previously failed.

[mchaggis]

BoingBag 1 installed, no change, still getting random failures.

Starting to suspect the "stable for years" 1230xa card isn't all that stable...